Sierra Club Bulletin. 



when I hesitated or distracting me when I was about to 

 jump. It seemed an everlasting journey and was getting 

 "on my nerves," when I finally emerged with great relief, 

 only to find that my work had been in vain, as I could not 

 proceed down the canon on the river bed on account of 

 the size of the boulders and the lack of anything on their 

 smooth surfaces to attach my rope to. I rebelled against 

 struggling back through that chilling shower of ice-water, 

 up hill, and, finding convenient footholds in the gnawed- 

 off granite strata, clambered up on the ice bridge and 

 walked back over it. One hundred and eighty-two paces 

 I counted as I climbed back over its uneven surface — at 

 least three hundred and fifty feet long, on August i6th, at 

 about five thousand feet elevation. 



It then appeared from my small point of view as if I 

 must climb Mount Watkins, eighty-five hundred feet high, 

 on the west side of the canon in order to get past this 

 doubtful place. Again my original theory of an animal 

 trail came back to me, and I decided to return and try to 

 pick up and follow that bear trail. After three hours of 

 heart-breaking, almost hand-over-hand climbing along 

 the sliding or brushy west side I finally got back to a 

 point just south of the "Jumping-ofif Place" pass and 

 sighted a promising way up the side of the gorge on the 

 east or left-hand side, which looked like a route that bears 

 or deer who did not carry ropes would select. 



I enjoyed a rest and a bracer here by plunging into a 

 convenient deep pool of icy water, took the stones out of 

 my shoes and the leaves, acorns and twigs out of my 

 clothes, and on starting up my new route found it, as I had 

 anticipated, the animals' route. It was 8 145 that morning 

 when I saw the first ray of the sun as I was escap- 

 ing from that sunless chasm and getting up on a restful 

 brushy flat or bench three or four hundred feet above the 

 river bed. Here I found to greet me fragrant azaleas or 

 rhododendrons, delicate pink mimulus, brilliant scarlet 

 buglers, blue larkspurs, harvest brodiseas, cardinal castil- 

 leias, chokecherries, thimbleberries, a pile of snow and a 



